Rigid Body Kinematics

Abstract

Rigid body kinematics is the study of the displacement, velocity, and acceleration of a rigid body with respect to a reference. We introduce the notion of reference frames and associate each reference frame with a rigid body. We thus achieve a mathematical framework for describing how rigid bodies move with respect to each other and with respect to the inertial reference frame.

Single rigid body motion serves as the basis for multibody motion. In addition to describe the configuration and motion space of vehicles and mobile robots, single rigid body kinematics is also the basis of robotics, i.e., multibody motion with additional kinematic constraints imposed on the motion space. Based on the concepts introduced in Chap. 1, the location, velocity, and acceleration of single rigid bodies are described in terms of well-defined mathematical entities. This chapter thus serves as an introduction to rigid body modeling as a part of an introductory robotics course.